First, the bad news: Johnathan Safran Foer's novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close occasionally goes so far over the top that jaded people (myself included) will want to roll their eyes. It revels in the sort of cloying sentimentalism that can only come from child savants investigating the death of a parent, or immigrants sharing stories of young love crushed by the Holocaust. The cast of eccentric characters and flashes of magic realism are often used to drive the author's points home, when in fact, he's already made himself perfectly clear. Like a filmmaker using Albinoni's Adagio as background music for a funeral, it can all seem a bit much. (Odd side note: that piece of music has a direct connection to Dresden, which figures prominently in the novel.)
Now, the good news: beneath the schmaltz lies an engrossing, heartbreaking story that's impossible to put down. Like a younger Tony Kushner, Foer juggles a multitude of themes and symbols, all of which converge in beautiful, sometimes breathtaking ways. In the end, we're left with a magnificent, hopeful fairy tale about love, loss, New York, and September 11. And I suppose given all that, and given the subject matter, the sentimentalism is probably more than justified.
NB: If you appreciate "X meets Y"-style comparisons, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close feels a lot like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time crossed with my all-time favorite short story, The Last Words on Earth. Just so you know.
